The waves of change mark IT’s transformation and progression through the history of computing — from mainframes to minis, PC/microprocessors to networked/distributed computing, and finally to today, the era of cloud computing.
In this era of cloud computing, EMC continues listening to and learning from our customers and partners. We are excited to lead them on their journey to hybrid could computing so they can realize the benefits of offering IT-As-A-Service and so they can maximize the opportunities of cloud computing and big data.
EMC has a remarkable track record of “skating to where the puck will be” – of getting to the next thing well ahead of customers’ biggest needs.That track record has taken EMC from being a $5B information storage company in 2002, to being a $20B enabler of cloud computing and Big Data analytics in 2012. And it represents a cumulative investment in organic and acquired innovation of > $27B over the last 9 yrs Since 2003, EMC has invested approximately $14.5B to acquire more than three dozen companies to grow and expand as a trusted provider of best-in-class technologies across a comprehensive range of adjacent domains that combined deliver greater value to the customer than any single one of them would alone. Acquisitions have built out our product portfolio and market reach in EMC’s core business. Our two largest acquisitions were in our ‘sweet spot’ – Data Domain and Isilon. Acquisitions have also enabled EMC to expand its core into adjacent market segments, including: security/compliance, cloud computing and data computing. This represents our journey to where cloud meets Big Data, as a focused technology company and a leader of the coming transformation of IT.
EMC is accelerating innovation to continue better serving customers and partners.
With 50,000 people in 83 countries, EMC is securing a powerful global presence.
The changes within our industry have been dramatic, but no technology has been as transformational as cloud computing. Cloud computing transforms IT, delivering the maximum possible IT efficiency. By deploying a pool of elastic resources, IT is dramatically reducing hardware costs and is making it simple to provision and move applications.
The current debate of the cloud era is: Which cloud model will win? Private cloud or public cloud?
In addition to the 78% of customers looking to pursue a private cloud by 2014— according to IDC, 77% have already been using Public Cloud Services in 2011. By leveraging both, customers can drive the most cost and agility benefits.
Hybrid clouds will undoubtedly become pervasive. Instead of being forced to buy more and more equipment to handle workload peaks in their private cloud, customers can put up public clouds with the vendors that they trust. Doing so will give customers the best costs and the most efficiency.
IT infrastructure transformation comes in the form of a hybrid cloud, where a converged, automated, and secure infrastructure will be created to allow customers the best of both public and private cloud worlds, depending on their business needs, risk assessments, and costs.IT needs a hybrid cloud – this approach combines what you do best with what service providers can do better, while keeping IT in control.
With the clouda top priority, EMC, together with our partners, offers three paths to cloud infrastructure and the most choice: “Best of Breed Infrastructure Components (EMC and VMware),” “Proven Infrastructure (VSPEX),” and “Converged Infrastructure (VCE vBlock).”
The application layer is also undergoing a transformation. Existing applications are transforming to run in virtual machines within cloud environments (i.e. SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, etc.). By leveraging an automated hybrid cloud infrastructure, you can virtualize your mission critical applications, move your existing applications onto virtual infrastructure without disruption, and deliver greater efficiency and agility.
Let’s take a look at what’s involved with transforming these application workloads.There are three key decisions to Transforming Your Workload Strategy and they are based on cost, risk, and functionality.Decide which workloads will run cheaper in cloud. In some cases, the best ROI is to let applications stay legacy.For applications that are cheaper when run in a public or private cloud, assess the information risk element; which applications can be run in the cloud without information risk?Finally, for the applications that are not risks, determine if the public cloud will impact needed functionality. EMC Consulting has a “Cloud Optimization” assessment to help work through these decisions.
The way end users access applications is also changing. As users bring new devices to the workplace, they expect to operate them using both personal and enterprise resources. IT must provide a new end user computing model so they can maintain control over information and access, while allowing users to choose their own devices. EMC thinks of this as the new layering of IT: Automated Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, New Application Platform and New End User Computing Platform. The new layering requires end-to-end security and management across layers.
In the same way we helped Visa, EMC is prepared to help you accelerate your IT transformation through EMC cloud services – offered through Global Services. We can equip your people with next generation skills, and help you adapt your IT processes and operational models. We apply our expertise to your IT transformation with documented best practices and proven methodologies that we’ve developed through thousands of customer engagements. Our customers benefit from more than 2,500 VMware certified professionals and the insights we’ve developed during EMC’s own journey to the cloud. With our comprehensive cloud services portfolio and deep experience, EMC Global Services can help you throughout this transformational journey— from strategy and design through implementation, training, support, and ongoing operations.
If there is one thing that is either going to accelerate the benefits of big data and cloud computing, or slow down those benefits – significantly slow down those benefits – it’s our ability as an industry to demonstrate trust and security in the big data assets and the cloud. In my opinion, that is what’s going to gate how fast the benefits of big data, real time predictive analytics and cloud computing will come to businesses and governments and all of us as individual users and consumers.
In the old world of IT security, things were much more static. We protected our computers if you will, our systems, with moats. You had to cross these moats or firewalls to get in. And in the mainframe computing wave, you had a proprietary network and terminal, so you didn’t really have to worry too much about antivirus. You didn’t have to worry too much about protecting your firewall, because everything was contained and proprietary. When you move to IP networking, when you move to almost any device you can think of as an end user device, the whole game changes. As we substituted PCs for terminals, the way the industry solved the new security problems that came up was to create the antivirus industry, and new companies were born and that technology was bolted on. Again, same thing happened when we substituted IP for proprietary networking typologies. The industry built firewall companies, and their solutions were bolted on.
In the cloud world, we’ve got a chance to clean this up a bit and build in some of these defenses. It’s a very dynamic world. The benefits of social networking and the openness and speed of computing make security harder. Today’s attackers are spear phishing, targeting specific individuals in your enterprise, using other companies in your supply chain as cover, and they’re actually stealing the identities of somebody in your company or at one of your partners’ companies. Now, when they get in, some of those older bolt-on security features become irrelevant, because the attackers have gotten in using stolen identities and credentials that the system recognizes as valid.
Therefore, what security must do is map the behavior of every IT user and monitor that and look for anomalies in behavior – in real time. This is a big data challenge. In real time, we have to be able to look at a user and say, this user has access rights to view this data, but I’ve never seen this user send data to Iran before, so maybe we should stop this until we can verify what is going on. This is how of how IT security is changing. We’ve got to change from the old static world of security to a much more dynamic approach to security, because if we do this right, there’s going to be tremendous acceleration in adoption of the cloud.
According to the same IDC study, “In 2011, the world generated more than two exabytes of new information every day.” That’s over 2048 petabytes a day.In fact, the digital universe is now generating more than five exabytes of data each day.
EMC’s portfolio for Big Data delivers new ways to store, analyze and take action on Big Data – at petabyte scale – including publicly available data, so you can achieve new agility, efficiency and business breakthroughs. You learn to model your data to make better decisions faster, with less risk. First you build a scale-out storage infrastructure that grows with your data – using Isilon data storage that is enterprise-class and can scale out to PBs. Then you deploy a database and file system built to extract value from your structured and unstructured data – using the Greenplum Database and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).Next you add a unified analytics platform that helps you collaborate – using the Greenplum Unified Analytics Platform (UAP).Finally, you may need to build a new set of custom Big Data analytic applications – using Pivotal Labs, the gold-standard for agile software development.
As with cloud, EMC Global Services providesa variety of services to help you build out your Big Data strategies and implement your Big Data infrastructure. These services include: Helping you identify the right opportunities to apply Big Data Helping you design and build a Big Data architecture that enables you to leverage these game-changing new technologiesAnd, helping you manage and support your Big Data environment to deliver maximum value to the business
In this new world, “information” will be the center of the IT universe.Inside the EMC family tree, media isn’t one size fits all – it presents a huge selection of different storage and best of breeds. Once that information is stored, IT can be certain information is always protected and always available.Information protection now requires “information security”. For mission critical and big data applications, you can run “IT-As-A-Service” using a Cloud operating system. At VMware, they’re building a cloud operating system - taking existing applications and encapsulating them, making them run on a flexible, virtual cloud environment. The result is better reliability, agility, and lower cost.You can build new applications that deliver “information analytics and intelligence”. This killer application advantage will come from how EMC builds new predictive analytical applications – giving customers massive business benefits. Additionally, EMC is working alongside many other vendors in this new cloud world.Finally, new users get information “anywhere, on any device, at any time” and this requires “identity security”.
Cloud and Big Data are driving innovation and new value for organizations of every kindCloud & Big Data also creating unprecedented opportunity for IT pros to Transform themselvesMcKinsey says there will be a Big Data skills shortage of 1.5+ million by 2018That means growing demand for Proven Professionals with valuable Cloud and Big Data skillsTraining and certification are essential credentials: specific emphasis on:Cloud ArchitectData Center ArchitectData ScientistContinue to invest in yourselves and transform by relentlessly pursuing new skills and trainingEMC Forum is a great opportunity to start that transformation.
